Why We Need Brunch More Than Ever, Even If Women Enjoy It

Freedom is French toast and booze at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

A free woman attended a protest in Los Angeles with a sign that read, “If Kamala were president, we’d be at brunch.” This led to a wave of backlash from people fundamentally opposed to a good time. Men with differing stages of neckbeards claimed that this sign represented peak “white feminism” and everything wrong with mainstream liberalism. As you can see below, it is just a sign. Not even the band Tesla got that worked up over signs.

Describing the sign as “embarrassing,” actor Alex Plank interpreted its message as “if Kamala had won, bad things would still be happening and you wouldn’t care.” That’s an incredibly unfair reading. I don’t know this woman, but I assume she is sapient enough to comprehend that “bad things” would still occur if Kamala Harris were president. It just wouldn’t be “war with Iran and maybe even Canada” bad. This woman wouldn’t have to spend her weekends at protests and could safely advocate for change through normal political channels because Fox News rejects, anti-science crackpots, and straight-up Nazis weren’t running the government.

Yes, America's Ready For A Woman President

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After Trump bombed Iran, someone with the social media handle “confessions of a 20something drama queen” posted the following:

“yall wanted Kamala so you can continue going to brunch so that when this happened under her, you feign ignorance because she did it behind closed doors (psssst… just like Obama)”

There is zero evidence that Harris would have attacked Iran. However, I must again stress that there is no shame in voting for the presidential candidate who you believe will let you eat brunch in peace.

I don’t get this far-left notion that only pampered elites can appreciate a good Sunday meal. My father was a child in 1950s South Carolina, and he fondly remembers those post-church suppers, which was basically brunch but with eight different meats. If your political ideology promotes sustained misery as a Platonic ideal, don’t expect much support from normal people.

Tyler Austin Harper, a staff writer for The Atlantic, posted on social media, “And if Kamala had been capable of appealing to people who don’t brunch, she’d be president.” (He did approve of “the martini-as-brunch-drink agenda the sign lady seems to be pushing.”)

I appreciate Harper’s work for The Atlantic, but his post did make me wonder, “Who doesn’t like brunch?” What better defines the American dream than, as Jim Gaffigan observed, sleeping through breakfast and demanding French toast at 1 p.m.? The late-morning until early-afternoon day drinking is the ultimate tribute to our European allies.

The late Anthony Bourdain famously criticized brunch in his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential: “‘Brunch Menu.’ Translation? ‘Old, nasty odds and ends and 12 dollars for two eggs with a free Bloody Mary.’” And the series Portlandia would later send up the absurdly long lines for the latest “hip” brunch spot. (Watch below.)

I’m not waiting an hour for any culinary expression of eggs, and although my wife and I once frequented a brunch spot in New York that served French toast made with giant croissants, my middle-aged health no longer permits starting the day with a blood sugar bomb. However, what I remember most from past brunches isn’t the food but the experience. It’s a pleasant couple hours with friends when you can just slow down without any pressing demands on your time. You’re not obligated to spend $20 for runny eggs over artisanal toast. Some of my favorite brunches have been at overlooked, casual spots where they still serve Denver omelets.

Bourdain raved about the Waffle House in an episode of Parts Unknown: “It is indeed, marvelous, an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color, or degree of inebriation, is welcomed—its warm yellow glow a beacon of hope and salvation, inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered all across the South to come inside. A place of safety and nourishment. It never closes, it is always faithful, always there for you.”

So, it would seem that Bourdain’s issue with brunch was the presentation and price. But a pecan waffle, steak and eggs with hash browns, and coffee for less than $15 is brunch at any time of the day. (Watch below.)

Of course, brunch became coded as a feminine activity, arguably around the time that Bourdain trashed it in Kitchen Confidential. HBO’s Sex and the City was at the height of its popularity in 2000, and author Jennifer Armstrong claimed in her book Sex and the City and Us that the series “foisted brunch upon an unsuspecting nation.”

“It does seem [Sex and the City] made brunch into kind of a thing, for women especially,” Armstrong said in a 2018 interview. “It became shorthand for something more than just a combination of lunch and breakfast. Brunch used to just mean we’re going to have fancy omelettes, but slightly later. This made it into this more social idea of women talking about their feelings and problems.”

Women enjoyed brunch too much, so a generation of men dismissed it as frivolous and even decadent. Look, even if your own mother never hugged you, that’s still no reason to begrudge the 170 million other women in America bottomless mimosas.

Last month, David Hogg raised some controversy when he told Bill Maher, “Young people should be able to focus on what young people should be focused on, which is how to get laid and how to go and have fun.”

Many liberal women felt as if Hogg was blaming them somehow for young people, particularly men, shifting right in the last election. I personally agree with Hogg that young people of all genders and persuasions should not have to exist with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. However, I strongly disagree that Democrats are the reason why young people can’t just Tinder and chill.

I was in my 20s during the 1990s. Bill Clinton was president. Hillary Clinton wasn’t baking cookies. It was a great time to be young, but the George W. Bush era was a pretty big downer. There was 9/11, the TSA, the Iraq war, and the 2008 financial collapse. Barack Obama delivered some hope and change, while Republicans stomped their feet. Then came Donald Trump, who is only fun for unstable psychopaths or people who hate brunch. If you’re the sort of liberal who resents when people are happy, as it suggests they aren’t sufficiently worried about their carbon footprint, then a perverse part of you might welcome Trump back to the White House. A political summer will never disrupt your winter of discontent.

I do think that Democrats too often treat their electoral victories as cease fires, rather than a single battle in a larger war, and Republicans eagerly exploit our complacency. When the 2020 election was finally called for Joe Biden, political scientist and author Ian Bremmer posted on social media, “Now is the time for every Biden supporter to reach out to one person who voted for Trump. Empathize with them. Tell them you know how they feel (you do, from 2016). Come up with one issue you can agree on.”

Pete Buttigieg echoed this sentiment: “If someone you love and care about voted the other way, today might be a good day to reach out. Not to talk politics, but to talk about things that will remind them (and yourself) why you love and care about them.”

Trump was openly plotting to steal the election, but Bremmer and Buttigieg were already hanging the “Mission Accomplished” banner. I’m sure Lincoln and Grant celebrated after Gettysburg but they didn’t send the troops home just yet. If Kamala Harris had won last year, the war wouldn’t have been over but so many lives would’ve been spared. That’s worth the blood sugar spike from croissant French toast.

We need more joy in our lives, no matter how fleeting. It’s the ultimate form of protest. I recommend spending the next four years like Hawkeye and the rest of the 4077th on M*A*S*H — playing pranks on jerks and drinking martinis before the next round of causalities arrive. See you at brunch.